In today's historic edition of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter Hongo details his extensive video game website message board history, and asks that you do the same. Where' have you been?
What is YOUR history when it comes to video game sites and boards?
I started on a site called Nintendo Village as a member back in 2001 or so. It was a barebones site and pretty much the only site I visited until I discovered IGN. After a year or so with IGN, I signed up for Nintendo's NSider forums under the name Mushroom5 in 2003 before my 13th birthday.
I posted there daily and ran an icon group in the Pokémon boards of NSider called PIA, whose goal was to get more Pokémon icons on NSider via the monthly votes. We did that task well and eventually had copycat, me too groups who eventually got the icon support groups canned by NSider Admins, although PIA still survived since we had a massive support base.
Nintendo canned NSider in 2007 after the Wii exploded with the public and I sort of fell out of the loop when it came to game communities since there was nothing quite like NSider, but the months before it closed shop, the bond between users was dying. I did post on the PlayStation boards shortly after since they were same as NSider when it came to layout (since both were powered by Lithium).
It wasn't until a couple of years ago I found Kotaku and here I am, under the name Hongo (Mushroom in Spanish). Kotaku has even a better community than NSider now that I think about it. I really enjoy talking to everyone and reading various comments. Sure, there's a few bad apples here and there, but what community doesn't have those?
About Speak Up on Kotaku: Our readers have a lot to say, and sometimes what they have to say has nothing to do with the stories we run. That's why we have a forum on Kotaku called Speak Up. That's the place to post anecdotes, photos, game tips and hints, and anything you want to share with Kotaku at large. Every weekday we'll pull one of the best Speak Up posts we can find and highlight it here.
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